Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (26 page)

In the second cage, Gepta kept another type of creature. There were half a dozen of the things; soon he’d need a new supply. They were about the size of mice, very like mice, in fact, but with curly golden pelts and impossibly large blue eyes. Each creature was sleek and clean, seemed to radiate warmth. Each had a bushy tail, rather like that of a miniature squirrel.

Suppressing a shudder, Gepta reached into the cage of the furry creatures. Using a large pair of plastic tongs, he seized one—it squeaked with surprise and pain—and transferred it from its cage. He opened the top of the other cage, dropped it into the center of the upraised hairy legs.

There was a squelch!, another terrified squeak, which was cut off sharply, then a crunch! Gepta let the lid drop, a warm glow inside him as his pet preened itself, one dark, many-jointed leg grooming another until all three were clean of the blood and fur of its meal.

It did him good to imagine that the small, furry, helpless creature he had just destroyed was Lando Calrissian. It did him a great deal of good. Others had attempted to interfere with Gepta’s plans before. Only one had managed to survive. Why, of all people, this insignificant vagabond, this itinerant gambler
and charlatan should so frequently come between the sorcerer and his plans was a mystery. Yet it had happened.

Very few individuals understood how much—and how little—the Sorcerers of Tund believed in magic. Even fewer were those who lived to pass the knowledge on to others. Calling up the
Wennis
’s captain’s ugly memories, for example, amplifying them, driving out everything else—there was nothing to it, nothing that couldn’t be done by anyone, given the proper electronics.

Yet those of Tund had their own beliefs about things that transcended science, and Rokur Gepta was a superstitious soul. He believed that some perverse kind of luck, some fate, karma, kismet, or destiny kept throwing Calrissian in his face. Sometimes it appeared the young gambler wasn’t even aware that it was happening.

Now the sorcerer would have an end to it.

He pressed a button set in the arm of his chair. An officer materialized, one a little younger than the captain.

“You are the second in command?” Gepta hissed.

The officer saluted uncertainly. He’d seen his superior dragged from the bridge. “Y-Yes … yes, sir, I am. I, er … shall we maintain our course for the Oseon, sir?”

Rokur Gepta waited a while to reply, knowing that the prolonged silence would further ravel the young officer’s nerves. In a military hierarchy there was
always
something to feel guilty about. It was designed that way, so that an individual couldn’t go through a single day without having to stretch, bend, or break a rule. This, of course, worked to the advantage of those at the top of the pyramid.

Just as it was working now.

When a fine sweat sprinkled the officer’s brow, Gepta finally spoke.

“No, no. We shall digress for a short time. I’ll give you the heading. Your captain will be indisposed for several hours, and I want to be well on my way by the time of his … recovery.”

Many parsecs away, in space equally as deep as that which enveloped the cruiser
Wennis
, a strange apparition manifested itself.

At its center lay the naked core of a dreadnaught-class ultralightspeed drive engine, pulsing, glowing, seeming to writhe with unholy energies as it twisted space around itself to
deny the basic laws of reality. A closer examination would have disclosed that it was old, very old, patched and welded together out of many such drive engines, long past obsolescence, verging on dangerous fatigue.

Surrounding it were at least two dozen equally weary and obsolete fighters of nearly as many separate pedigrees, some constructed by inhuman races and sloppily converted. They were connected to the drive core with gleaming cables that glowed and sparked and writhed in time to its fundamental frequency. The fighters appeared to be towing the engine. In fact, the reverse was true. These small craft were incapable of making the translation to faster-than-light velocities themselves. They let the core field do it for them.

Militia Leader Klyn Shanga sat before the controls of his aged spacecraft, his eyes unseeing, his mind turned inward. It had been thus for over eleven days—this was the most excruciatingly dull voyage he had ever endured. Yet it was necessary: honor demanded it.

Though alive with lights, his controls were, for practical purposes, inert, locked into the controls of all the other fighters, each of them in turn slaved to a cobbled-together navigational computer on the drive engine.

There was nothing to do, and all the time in the universe to do it.

He had long since stopped thinking of his home, a little-known backwater planet, settled long generations before the present wave of Imperial colonization—settled even before the Old Republic had sent its own explorers outward. He had long since ceased thinking about his family. There was little point: it was highly unlikely he would ever see them again.

He had devoted even less time to thinking about his present task, the mission of this motley group of militiamen, retired policemen, adventurers, and professional soldiers as ancient and obsolete as the craft they flew. They were their culture’s expendables. The task was simple and straightforward: find someone and kill him. It didn’t matter that their target, their enemy, had damaged their civilization severely, exposed it to a galaxy-wide culture more potent and wealthy, stripping away its hidden safety. It mattered less that the life they sought to take was the very embodiment of evil. Evil or not, it would pass out of existence if they did their work right.

If they didn’t, their fates were academic. Evil abounded in
the universe, and one life more or less wouldn’t make much difference. The damage was done; this was for revenge, pure and simple—and perhaps to protect other helpless, defenseless worlds.

Klyn Shanga glanced through the canopy of his fighter at the rest of the group clustered around the battleship engine. All together, they looked laughable—the same way, no doubt, their world had looked to the intruder. They resembled nothing more than a grotesque, desiccated plant, an interstellar tumbleweed being blown wherever the fates would have it. Shanga tried to take comfort in the notion that nothing could be further from the truth, that they were a spare and deadly force who would take their adversary completely by surprise.

At that moment, his communications console sprang into life.

There were no greetings, no salutations. The beam was tight, intended only for the cluster of fighters. It boomed and faded with the galactic drift.

On the screen, a young military figure was visible, his gray uniform unadorned by rank or unit markings. Shanga knew him to be the second officer of the decommissioned Imperial Cruiser
Wennis
.

The figure did not speak, but only nodded.

Keying his transmitter, Shanga asked, “He is on his way, then?”

The figure nodded again, but hatred and fear burned in his eyes, just as it burned in the heart of Klyn Shanga and all his men.

“He will be there when we arrive?” asked Shanga.

For the first time, the officer spoke. “There is the possibility of some delay—of a detour, apparently—but I believe the original course will be resumed in a short time.”

Klyn Shanga rubbed his calloused hands together. In the many decades since his world’s last war, he had been a farmer, living peaceably and contentedly among animals and plants and children. Now that could be no more, because of the person they were discussing. He knew his men were listening to the confirmation that the prey was at last near to hand. They had come a long, long way to hear that news.

“You take considerable risk,” Shanga said, some sympathy seeping into his weathered expression.

“It is unnecessary to discuss that. It is well worth it. I must signal off; the chance of detection grows by the second.”

Shanga nodded. “Be well, then, and good luck.”

“The same to you.”

Many parsecs away, an impatient Rokur Gepta closed a switch and sat back, to ponder. His first, most immediate inclination was to choke the life—better yet, the sanity—from the young pup who was betraying him. Not for the first time was he grateful to himself for having installed the secondary system of surveillance devices in the personal quarters of his underlings. The second officer had easily fooled the official bugs.

Well, Gepta would have his revenge at the appropriate time. Now it was important to let this complication resolve itself. He did not recognize the individual with whom the officer had spoken, but then Gepta was very old, so old that the truth would have frightened most ordinary beings. He had seen and done a lot in the many centuries he had lived. He had made many enemies, most of them now long dead.

So should it always be.

One thing he could do: hasten the process. He shelved his earlier plans; they had had a certain hesitancy to them anyway. He keyed a switch on the table beside the bed in his living quarters.

“Bridge? Gepta. Cancel previous orders. Reinstate the course I previously gave you. We will proceed directly to the Oseon.”

L
OB
D
OLUFF WAS
a pear-shaped man who looked larger on the televisor than he was in fact. He had what Lando found himself
thinking of as a skin-tight dark beard and a naked scalp that looked as though it had been waxed and polished.

His manner was ingratiating, he was an enthusiastic
sabacc
player, and a good loser. This was something of a necessity, it appeared, since enthusiasm and skill do not always go together.

Sitting across the table from Lando, Doluff managed to hold his cards up while resting his elbows on his protuberant stomach. Fate had presented him with a Six of Flasks and a Mistress of Staves on the initial deal, yielding a value of nineteen. Courage and enthusiasm do not always go together, either. He stood pat, somehow failing to take into account the fact that the longer he held the cards, the likelier it was they would alter themselves before his very eyes.

Lando, with a Seven of Coins and the negative card, Demise, needed something better than minus six to win this hand. He dealt himself an Ace of Sabres, bringing the score to nine—still insufficient. The next player also took a card; the Administrator Senior had already decided to refuse; the player to his left took a card; the one to Lando’s right stood pat.

Lando dealt himself another card, the betting proceeding with each turn around the table. They had anted at a thousand credits that night, Lando’s fourth in the Oseon, and after three rounds of betting, an impressive amount of money lay on the table.

Mistress of Coins. Lando was one point short of a pure
sabacc
. He held his peace. The cards seemed slow tonight, reluctant to perform their transmutations. He could feel his luck glowing warm within him. He was relaxed.

The player to his left took a card. The Administrator Senior still stood pat. The next player took a card—and immediately slammed her hand down on the table.

“Zero!” she grumbled in disgust. There were three ways of going out in the game: exceeding twenty-three, falling below minus twenty-three, or hitting zero. The player to Lando’s right stood pat.

A flicker of movement in his hand caught Lando’s eye. One of the cards was changing.

“
Sabacc
!” he said with satisfaction. Demise had made itself into Moderation. The odds against such consecutivity were high, and so was the value of the pot the young gambler raked in.

The others tossed their cards on the table. The deal would stay with Lando for another hand.

Shuffling the cards, he considered those playing with him. There was, of course, Lob Doluff, too conservative a player to make any real gains—no threat, but a reliable source of income. He should stick with managing a bureaucracy. He wasn’t cut out to be a gambler.

That night they were at Doluff’s estate. The game shifted to a new place each night it was played. A few kilometers outside what passed for a city, it was a rather large dome on the surface, filled with moist air and tropical plants. The cold stars rose clearer and sharper than they had any natural right to do above the thick jungle that surrounded the players.

The table had been placed on a broad, tiled walkway in the very center of the giant decorative greenhouse. A fountain burbled agreeably nearby. It was practically the only noise: the Administrator Senior had not seen fit to populate his garden with animals. From time to time, a mechanical servant would emerge from between the heavy plantings to offer the players a drink. Lando stuck with
snillik
, a thick liqueur from somewhere near the galactic Center, one he actively detested and therefore drank slowly and judiciously.

Having shuffled the deck a fifth and final time, he offered it to the player on his right for a cut. That worthy accepted, divided the deck into three stacks, and reassembled it in a different order. Lando kept an eye on him; he had the look of yet another professional, although he’d claimed to be a retired businessman. Perhaps he was both.

Approximately of middle age, Del Cycer was extraordinarily tall for a human being, well over two meters. He was also extraordinarily thin. He was dressed in a bright green caftan and wore a great many rings on his fingers.

“You have been recently to the Rafa, I heard it said, Captain Calrissian. Is it true they’ve found the legendary lost civilization that was supposed to be there?” Cycer’s tone was conversational, friendly, interested.

Lando reclaimed the cards, dealt them around the table in a practiced, leisurely manner.

“It might be more accurate to say the lost civilization found
us
. I was there when it happened. The ancient Sharu are back and setting up in business.”

“How dweadfuw!” the creature to Lando’s left responded. It was something nasty looking, with a small trunk
dangling beneath its bloodshot eyes. Even more unfortunate, its blood was green. The veins clashed with the deep blue of the irises. “Does that mean theah won’t be any mowe wife-cwystals?”